Clandestine
by Aripheese
Summary: Some Sectors of Midgar are impoverished, and Tifa Lockhart is struggling to keep 7th Heaven afloat in its off-season. She sought out a little help online from an anonymous sugar daddy, but when she comes to meet him, an opportunity to fulfill her life's mission drops neatly into her lap. [Rufus/Tifa, rating pending for visibility.]
1. Chapter 1

Sector 8 never slept. It was rife with night-clubs, dinner theatres that ran showings of LOVELESS until those wee morning hours, the local rich boys who wanted a thrill but were too young for a membership card, and all one ever wanted in an entertainment district. With the pizza as it was, too, dawn never came; their sun may as well have been neon.

Or so Tifa Lockhart thought, dismally, while she strode vaguely north along Sector 8's unblemished, cement sidewalk. What a stupid world of difference between her home of Sector 7 and 8, even though they were fucking adjacent to one another. Her maroon eyes sharpened harshly as she stared and walked onward. Even if the assertion were irresponsible, she thought it just another thing to blame on the Shin-Ra.

Regardless, she hadn't put on makeup and that skater dress in the back of her closet that night to go out and grouse. Remembering the reason made her blush a smidgeon, but she forgot about her subtle embarrassment when she heard her PHS ding. She paused, dodged politely to the sidewalk's edge, and looked at the text message she had received.

_I'm here in front. Where are you?_

It'd be really nice if her heart hadn't jumped into her throat, wouldn't it? Tifa typed, '_Almost there,' _put it away, and kept walking. Was she even the dating type? She felt somewhat degenerate for even agreeing to this, given the lucrative and sexual nature of sugar relationships. Fortune had seen her not having to send anything lecherous to her "daddy," though.

"Daddy." Ugh. She had grown up as a daddy's girl, thus making her feel like she had desecrated something sacred from her childhood. Even so, her benefactor had requested to meet her after three months of sweet-talking over the web, and it was in her best interest to honor it. He had not only kept 7th Heaven afloat with the gil he had allocated to her but also paid for over two years of her property rental. Furthermore, he had also not questioned how she used the gil he exchanged for her time.

Tifa kind of liked that anonymity and privacy. They had never shared their names, and even though his wealth and promptness likely meant he was with the Shin-Ra, he had treated her remarkably well. Maybe he was a TURK, or even better, with the city government.

After turning a corner, she saw an illuminated billboard, high and proud on the siding of her destination: a restaurant called _Fête_. It was built of brick that seemed newly laid, and its looming mahogany doors were so beautiful that they seemed like a relic of a time long gone. Her date was allegedly standing in front; Tifa tore herself away from wonderment for a moment to seek him out. The only person in front of _Fête_ faced away from her, swathed in a floor-length, white overcoat. She squinted as she drew nearer.

He was blond. _Very _blond. Blonder than Cloud, somehow. He had heard her heels clicking against the concrete and turned to look at her, his eyes electric-blue and smirk self-satisfied.

Anger suddenly bloomed through her bosom as she recognized him. There was neither showing nor voicing it, however, as she realized the position by which she had been blessed. It was a golden opportunity to get close to the Shin-Ra and destroy it from within. She was going to avenge her father, Cloud's mother, her entire hometown.

Lacing her hands behind her, Tifa leaned over, smiling at him. "Hiya! I'm Tifa. You must be - ?"

"Yes," he affirmed, clearly digesting the image of her body. "I am Rufus Shinra, Vice President of the Shin-Ra Electric Power Company. Tifa, was it? It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance." At once, he offered her his arm. "Shall we?"

Even though she needed to employ every crumb of her limited acting ability, it had proven impossible for her to not be bashful. He was damn handsome, and it made her angrier that such fine masculine beauty had been wasted on someone with his Planet-destroying levels of greed for gil. In spite of that, she still seized his arm and walked into Fête with him, affectionately holding his upper arm with her opposite hand.

_Barret's gonna shit himself when I tell him about this ..._


	2. Chapter 2

Given Tifa's modest upbringing, the spacious, sultry atmosphere of Fête was a marvel to take into her senses. Crystalline reflections of light moved sensually across the black-painted interior drywall from the central, ornate chandelier that hung directly above a white grand piano. An alto sang while she played a coquettish, slower tune, the synchronicity of both skills just utterly masterful.

There was an older woman behind a neatly organized desk, and she received them very warmly. "Ah, Vice President," she greeted Rufus, who nodded, still wearing his characteristic smirk. "You must be here for your 10:45 reservation." She was conventionally beautiful, her fox-like features and smile so upkept that one must wonder how she maintained so much youth, what with the croak of age in her voice. Hostess seized two menus she had apparently prepared for their arrival and came around the side. "Please follow me to your private dining quarters."

Tifa was certain that any other woman would be crying in delight - to be courted by such an influential man in such an expensive restaurant. To be in her position under these circumstances was perverted. The Shin-Ra were to blame for almost every hardship she'd ever experienced and should be liable for the poverty, starvation, and death she had continued to witness in immigrating to Midgar. To essentially date its Vice President? Her bowels were water as she assuaged her inner fury, but she was only able to calm herself down with the prospect of destroying his revolting company.

"Rufus, it's absolutely beautiful here," she said, in the best attempt to warp her anger into something positive she could muster. "It smells like freshly baked bread, too."

"That's right," the receptionist chirped, smiling back at the two of them. "All of our food is made from scratch by the most skilled chefs and bakers on the Planet. We even grow our own wheat on top of the Sector 8 plate, raise our own cows for dairy and meat, and make our own butter."

Rufus said nothing, so to fill the silence, Tifa acted impressed. "A lot of love goes into your food."

"Why, thank you, dear."

Soon enough, they wove their way through the myriad of intimate tables and found the back. A black, silken curtain hung from an invisible rafter from above, hidden by the environmental darkness, and when pulled back, revealed a chamber with its own, smaller chandelier. Their table was a little larger than the ones outside, and it had a black tablecloth rather than the white. After unwinding his arm from Tifa's grasp, Rufus advanced to pull out a chair for her. It thunked against the hardwood floor in such a way that suggested a heavier weight. "Please, Tifa, sit."

"Th-thank you," she sputtered, moving into the space hurriedly. After pushing her in, he moved to his own.

"_Un moment._ Your server will be with you shortly." Hostess set down their menus neatly in front of them. "Your complimentary champagne is sitting on the table, already uncorked for your pleasure. Please let us know if you need anything more." With that, she went on her way.

Now in their lonesome, Tifa stole the first hard look at her date she'd had and realized his azure predator's eyes had long been on her. Her stomach turned.

Extravertedly, he went ahead and took up that bottle of champagne, only to bring it over to her glass and pour. It was pale, almost the color of Rufus' hair, and bubbled energetically. Nothing like it had ever been served in 7th Heaven.

"I'll cut straight to the point of this meeting," he declared, shifting the mouth of the bottle into his own glass. "Enabling a woman financially, especially one as stunning as you, has been exhilarating, and it gave me unexpected joy." Rufus' self-assuredness had jarred something in Tifa's chest. He smiled so handsomely, too, that it was already hard to remain angry that he was Shin-Ra leadership.

Shin-Ra had killed her father and caused a massacre in her hometown. If he were to convince her he was benign, he would have to move the entire Planet. She watched him attentively, sweet-faced but black-hearted.

"However, I'm not satisfied with our arrangement. My dissatisfaction doesn't come from an obvious place - of lust, for example. Your body bewilders and enraptures me, but it isn't the reason I've asked you here."

A quiet heat of fury and embarrassment ruddied her face. Wholly inexperienced in these matters, let alone _faking _them, she picked up her champagne glass and took a dainty draught from it. She had stricken true, as Rufus continued to speak.

"I must give Shin-Ra an heir." She set the glass down, scrutinizing him and the flavor of their champagne. She hated him and all of this decadence. She hated his arbitrary corporate nepotism too much to realize his meaning. She hadn't even belonged at Fête in her Sunday best. "That is my current duty. Tifa, I don't know you very well, nor you me, but that must change."

Something changed in her understanding, and her thin, dark eyebrows drew together. "Rufus … Do you mean - ?"

"Yes. My goal tonight is to make you my girlfriend and someday my wife, if all goes well."

Tifa's soul left her body. She lived to serve AVALANCHE and their anti-Shinra interests, but was she above playing with someone's heart? She had no time to decide. She ran the tip of her index finger around the edge of her fluted glass, her maroon eyes flickering up to his. "Well, what motivates you to have children now? There's a good reason, isn't there?"

Rufus pressed his lips together and then wove a hand through his hair. Tifa was unable to discern the look on his face.


	3. Chapter 3

While Tifa searched for something in glacial eyes nigh unreadable, Vice President himself wrested up his own glass of champagne by its slender neck, tipping it against his lips to sample the sweet taste of a Mideelan doux - the rarest luxury bubbly the Planet had ever known. Fête was one of two places that served it, and really, it was such a gratuitous display of the owner's wealth to serve it as a complimentary ornament to every dinner. There was another in Mideel, naturally, and then a lot of their bottles were locked up in Shin-Ra's own coffers. It was sugar on his every bud; while he typically preferred something hard and mixed with coffee of all things, _L'Ambroisie du Sucre _was the reason he memetically returned to this place.

The bashful vixen before him bristled against every word he spoke, and it was fruitful to his own hidden amusement to observe as she flushed and recoiled in her unconscious ways. It was monstrously beneath him in composure to indicate to Tifa, of course, that if she were for his eyes' sole pleasure, he relished in such pleasure. Rufus Shinra wasn't the type to act on his carnal appetites, but the very look of her made hunger stir in him, somewhere beneath the polished veneer of his cold impassion.

To her query about timing, his smirk deepened meaningfully with his confidence. "I'll ask the questions. In fact, I have one for you already.

"Now, quite clearly, I was all too willing to enter our prior contract, so I believe it myself. But what convinced _you_ that exclusive viewership of your body was worth tens of thousands of gil? A pittance to me, really, but I'd like for you to answer the question."

"Lockhart" before him hadn't bothered to abate her furious surprise at his debasing ask, a mild point of victory for his wanton ego. She had attempted just doggedly to bridle her passions a mere moment ago, but at once, she put effort into its concealment again. Rufus beheld her like a hawk, strategizing that this was headed in one of two directions.

"Pressure's on, huh?" Her shoulders subtly shifted as too-idle hands fidgeted in her lap. The good Vice President was used to perfection, acclimated to results, accustomed to ritual affirmation - yet, her nervous japes had whiffled a good blow against his permafrost-laden heart. She was lovely in bedeviling ways, but he was too reputably vicious not to withstand her humor so early in this new war of theirs.

However enchanted he was, he deigned to impatiently draw in the leash. "I'm waiting."

Tifa stammered, evidently realized her station, and then squared her posture, recovering. Her stake in this ordeal was too great for impudence, and he knew it. Shyly, she met his gaze. "I - I don't really know how to answer you."

"I know," he immediately countered, arrogance curling upward the edges of his balmed lips. "So don't insult my intelligence by putting on these comical airs, Tifa. You're nervous." Glittering glass still in his possession, Rufus rose from his seat and made a princely jaunt over toward her side. Once arrived, he captured her neck's nape in the cradle of his hand and brought his crystal's edge to her scarlet-laden lips. "Drink from my glass. All of Midgar does anyway."

An order.

Defiance flared in her vermilion eyes, the sole objection to his demands. "Yessir." A split second later, she tilted her head upward obediently, permitting the flow of effervescent doux into her mouth. He gnarled his gunslinger's fingers into her soft, sable tresses until he had a fistful and quartered her there, until he had forced her to drain every last sparkling drop of Fête's over-the-top giveaway. It was remarkably inelegant, as some had dribbled down from the left side of her mouth.

Rufus, in his indolent way, placed the glass back on their table and then inclined forth to lave away that rogue champagne. Index and middle fingertips were set beneath her jaw to check her pulse at the same time, and it hammered madly away in her veins. Her breath had hitched.

He chortled, utterly gratified. "Good. You already understand that I own you." Withdrawing entirely, he beheld the fetching shade of red she had turned and was nigh-wolfish with his resulting smirk, before returning to his seat.

"You -"

"Server coming in!"

Thereafter, he heard the rustle of that curtain, and through it emerged a middle-aged gentleman dressed in a tuxedo and humiliating bowtie. Hair was fashioned in an undercut style, accentuated with a sharply shaven line where the side-part of his longer coiffure met with its buzzed edge. He had a charming, hospitable smile, even if his face were a bit too froggish to be entirely considered attractive.

"Ah, Bruce." Uncanny recognition. "The veal piccata. One plate."

"Very good, Mr. Vice President. At once."

He hadn't bothered to obscure his amusement when redirecting his attention back to his date, secure in his bearings with the noise of the falling curtain again.

She was flabbergasted, and he had to say that it was endearing.

"You own me? How can you say something like that? I'm a human being."

"There is the fighting spirit I had expected of you. There are callouses on your knuckles, you know. And a scar -" he pointedly gazed down at the summit of her cleavage, where there was only a centimeter visible of whitened, damaged tissue peeking "- right where a lesser man may appreciate you foremost."

Tifa stared at him dubiously, lips slightly ajar. They moved as if she meant to say something, but no words had come. He was impressed by her resolve for restraint, if anything.

She was in a lion's den, however, so he was going to strike if she weren't. "Tell me about yourself, Tifa. Why has such a stunning woman sought my assistance?"

She made an undignified noise, as if to calm herself down, he thought.

"I run a bar in Sector 7's undercity, called Seventh Heaven -"

"_Cunning,_" he mirthlessly quipped.

"Excuse me?"

"Seventh Heaven in Sector Sev - do go on."

She sighed through her nostrils at him. The desired effect. "There's a recession ripping through the slums right now, and none of my patrons are coming around anymore. I can't - I can't pay my mortgage on it if I'm not netting business, can I? You have given me so much gil over these last few months that I've paid for the next two years' worth and have savings. I can't thank you enough for that generosity, Rufus."

It was the first time she had smiled genuinely all night. Enchanted, his left fair eyebrow piqued.

"You've an incredibly comforting smile," he confessed despite himself, maintaining their eye-contact. She unfortunately only donned an expression of concern after his commentary, which blessedly served to comport himself back into pristine equilibrium. "It is entirely obvious when a smile is false. Warmth doesn't reach the eyes. But yours …"

"Rufus -"

"Why don't you come closer to me? I've a free knee for you."

Tifa drew both of her lips inward to chew on them, conflict illustrated clearly on her features. She rose, to his pleasant surprise, but what she had done next had nearly knocked the air from his lungs.

She sat astride his lap, rather than horizontally across his thighs like he had intended, both his hands at elevation to accommodate her saddling. Determination set in her dark visage, she bore into him while it was his turn to be dumbfounded.

"Skipping the pan altogether to jump straight into veritable fires, Tifa?" A half-hearted flirt, purposed to rile up her heart.

"Your ears are blushing." It was so blunt. His thin lips parted as he leered with subdued anger into her pretty face. "Don't you have any shame, Rufus Shinra?"

"No." He lassoed back some of his pride, greedily claiming the small of her waist. The fabric of her dress was cheap, probably purchased from some half-baked tailor under the plate, yet it cinched nicely at her waist. Her earrings were, however, authentic diamonds shaped like long teardrops. What a motley combination. "Where did you get this scar? Who cut you right between your breasts?"

He knew, of course. He wanted to see if she'd put up a ruse.

"Why does the Vice President of Shin-Ra care?" That wasn't a response he had accounted for, though. Not to mention that every mention of his consolatory position grated on his patience. He relaxed the tic in his jaw.

"I want to know who has wounded my future wife, so that I might use every mote of Shin-Ra's martial might to pulverize him into worthless meat. Grind him into paste. Make him into swiss cheese, if you wanted. He deserves a comeuppance."

She hadn't accounted for that response, either. Rufus was wholly aware, objectively, that it was Shin-Ra, Inc that had permanently marked her body, but he wanted to curate the notion in her that he was unwitting to the Nibelheim Incident. For now.

"It was Sephiroth." He battened down his self-assured smirking for a moment, as she had decided to trust him. "I don't think you'll have the chance."

"Yes, Sephiroth was killed in action." He remembered the emailed announcement for Sephiroth's fate, but his dossier had been sealed by father dearest post-haste after he had caught wind of what happened. The TURKs had been mum until he was placed under house-arrest in their Headquarters.

"Not before he set all of Nibelheim ablaze." So, she aimed to trust him with confidential business. "I don't really want to talk about this."

"Then don't." His dominant right hand raised to settle her chin between his thumb and forefinger. "I represent Shin-Ra's next generation, Tifa. It will be a gilded, industrious era, wherein I will dispense with the cruelties that created Sephiroth."

Tifa debated whether she should dare to hope, but instead, she wound an arm backward to fetch the glass from her side of the table and summoned it to his lips, mimicking charmingly his gesture of supremacy just moments ago.

"I'm a bartender, you know," she lilted, "but I don't typically water my customers." Her blushes betrayed her well-composed grace, but her forward manner of "watering" him was sanctioned at once. Cold eyes in a sultry narrow, he took a long draught of it until history repeated itself, and all of it was down his unquenchable gullet.

She had even discarded it back on the table like he had. Swiftly, he grasped at her backside with avarice and hefted her upward and onto him, rising from his seat. She had yelped with half-fright and the other half delight at such a violation of her personal space, involuntarily clinging to him for dear life until he had pressed her back into the nearest wall. Arms coiled around his neck; thighs wrapped about his waist.

"That's not all you are, Tifa Lockhart."

"Lock - I never told you my last name." Three-quarters fear, one quarter morbid curiosity.

"That's right." His face was mere centimeters from hers. "Do you remember the media spinning stories about AVALANCHE some years ago?" Recognition simmered down the heat in her eyes. "Me."

"What?"

"To usurp the Presidency from my father, I used AVALANCHE to make countless attempts on his life." There had been somewhat of a romantic fantasy brewing between them, but he had opened Pandora's box now. It annoyed him somewhat to dispel it, but chores needed doing. "I know all of your intrigues, your motives for creating a fringe cell, and hiding them in the basement of your establishment. Easy to hide."

100% fear. "H-how did you find out?"

"Your IP address. Fuhito's instructions must not have been entirely clear to your bomb-maker, were they? Your Shintranet searches matched up to your Gil Plus account's source. Imagine if I had not been the one to find that out, Tifa. Your bar and everything you have worked for up until now would have leveled into nothing."

She was dejected now, squirming to get out of his grapple. He had worn too many support materia under the double-breasted lapels of his overcoat for that to track, however, and so she stayed put. "Let me go!"

"I'm not going to hurt you." Almost bored. "This changes none of what I told you earlier."

She stilled, incredulity written all over her face. "What are you getting at, Rufus?" There was much more venom in her voice.

"The less you know about my plan, the better." Honestly, it was just embarrassing to admit that he was supposed to be under house-arrest for being naughty! "Bear in mind that I fully intend to help AVALANCHE detonate these reactors, one-by-one. In exchange, I'd like you to meet my father, who has been asking for grandchildren since I've come of age."

After a few seconds' processing, Tifa Lockhart was gripped by a bout of sterling giggles. It was beautiful to hear, but his aggravation mounted for its context. "You - !" She had to grasp his shoulders to steel herself. "You want to bring me home to your father!"

"Yes."

"Oh." A final laugh died in her throat. "I'm sorry. You've put me under so much pressure that I had to release it somehow, and it came out like - like that."

He grunted and then set her down, only to pick her up again like a bride and carry her to her seat. After he set her down, he lifted her jaw upward to peer at her lovely face, so beautifully set in crimson because of him. Her doe eyes were wide, now bereft of their fright, entirely distrusting of him. It sated his lust for fatalism, for the moment, evidenced by a self-congratulatory smile that bared his fetching fangs.

"So, then - you're my girlfriend now," he declared, as immutable fact. "Remind me who owns you."

"Rufus Shinra owns me," she echoed softly, beguiled somehow.

"Louder."

"Rufus Shinra owns me!"

She had closed her eyes to mind her raised volume, which he only decisively took as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: laying claim to both of their first kisses after his throat thrummed with his superior air of approval.


End file.
